The Death in the Willows

by Forrest, Richard;

  “No sense worrying about unstolen votes after the barn door is unlocked.”

  “I lost that in translation, Lyon. If we’d only been here—we knew the problem from the last poll.”

  Bea put her arm around her friend’s shoulder. “It’s all right, Kim. We’ll try again.”

  “We’ll demand a recount. That rat bastard! That creepy fink! If it wasn’t for him this wouldn’t have happened.”

  “It was a dirty campaign.”

  “Our opponent was bad enough. I mean that son of a bitch Marsh. Losing this election is his fault. My fault. If I hadn’t been so damn snowed by his African stories and the rush he gave me, I would have become suspicious.”

  “It’s not your fault, Kim.”

  “I should have known he was making a play for me to get in tight. Who was he, Lyon? Who was Raven Marsh?”

  “They lifted his fingerprints during the autopsy and discovered that he’d served in the army as Major Raven Rhinelander, who was a Green Beret during the fifties and early sixties. He was allowed to resign in 1965 for what the military called excessive zeal in the interrogation of prisoners. After that he sold his services as a mercenary to a couple of African conflicts.”

  “Which explains the African snow job he gave me.”

  “Sergei Norkov knew that the Hungerford Corporation would need an occasional hit, but he wanted everything to be completely separate from the families. They contacted Raven through an ad in one of the mercenary magazines. Raven was a new and unknown face, and he evidently did his jobs well.”

  “Then Attkins told the truth. No one ever had seen him.”

  “Not and lived.”

  “He sure used me.” Kim threw the tally sheets toward a wastebasket and stepped through the door leading to the now deserted patio.

  Lyon and Bea watched Kim cross the patio, place her palms on the rough stone of the parapet wall, and bend forward in grief. They followed her out until Lyon stood between them with his arms around both women. “We’ll recover,” Rocco heard him say.

  Rocco Herbert was not an imaginative man, but he knew the thoughts of his friends standing so quietly under the hazy stars.

  A warped man had moved down a bus aisle and forced Lyon to violate his most basic value—reverence for life. Subsequent events had caused the destruction of others, and forever a sense of inchoate guilt would weigh upon his friend.

  The same events had kept Bea from her campaign, and now her personality and capabilities had been rejected by the voters. Kim had given herself completely to a man who had used and deceived her.

  They would heal slowly, but heal they would.

  Rocco stood in the doorway. His large bulk broke the light as it fell across his shoulders, and his body cast a protective shadow over those by the parapet.

  Turn the page to continue reading from the Lyon and Bea Wentworth Mysteries

  1

  “Don’t let the goddamn scabs in here. Hit him with a two-by-four!”

  “Faby, please! Dottie is trying to rest and you’re upsetting her.”

  Fabian Bunting ignored the comment, gripped the window frame tightly, and continued looking down out the window of the Murphysville Convalescent Home at the picket line of strikers one floor below. “There’s a fink trying the side door. Get him!”

  “Faby, if you don’t stop I’ll have to sedate you. We can’t have you throwing the pin out of your hip.”

  “You just try that, hon. I’ll jam the hypodermic in your fanny.” The old woman shrugged the nurse’s restraining hand from her shoulder. “And in the future, young woman, you may call me Bunting. Dr. Bunting. And for your information, the individual in the other bed is Mrs. Rathbone.”

  “We can’t have this! Really!” The nurse wheeled the casement window shut, latched it, and firmly pushed Fabian Bunting back in her wheelchair. “I’m sorry there isn’t any OT today, but with most of the staff out it can’t be helped.”

  “Why aren’t you on the picket line, sweets?”

  “I’m a professional.” The nurse straightened her carriage and aligned the fall of her skirt. “Now, please be good. We’re terribly shorthanded and …”

  “What do I get if I’m good?”

  “Well, I’ll find you something nice. Perhaps a special dessert treat with lunch.”

  “A treat? Jesus! Do you think I’m suffering from anility, Miss Whatever-your-name-is?”

  “Miss Williams.”

  “Do you know what the word means?” The old woman peered closely at the name tag on the nurse’s blouse. “Bambi. God, a grown woman named Bambi.”

  Miss Williams turned on her heels and flounced from the small room. Fabian Bunting spun her wheelchair in a semicircle. “It’s the feminine form of senility, Bambi,” she called. “The word has an interesting derivation. It’s from the Latin anilis, meaning old woman. Old woman,” she repeated again under her breath. She wanted to throw things, to throw something against the wall. She wanted to hear the breaking of glass to assuage the hurt that filled her. But most of all, she wanted to break the binds of her physical self that had brought her here after eighty-four years of thriving independence. Her hand brushed vehemently along the bureau, knocking cosmetics and assorted bottles to the tile floor where they shattered into dozens of shards. It made her feel a little better.

  “Miz Bunting, please don’t make so much noise.”

  Faby Bunting whirled her wheelchair to face the other bed, which was occupied by a frail woman younger than herself. There was a poignant quality to the plea. It was a note of desperation from someone who could voice no other. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Rathbone.”

  “I never did like loud noises,” the wavering voice said in a plea of a different sort.

  “I guess you didn’t, dear,” Fabian said in a compassionate tone. “I seem to get very angry recently. I get mad at all sorts of things, worthy or not. Do you know what I mean? I’ve got to feel, and God only knows there isn’t much in here to laugh about.”

  “I only want to be quiet and sleep.”

  I know you do, Faby thought. You’ve already stopped eating and you hardly speak. I think you’ve chosen your time. She turned back to the dresser and bent forward to open the middle drawer. What she was looking for was at the back, and she rummaged until she found the small case. The leather was old and cracked, but the opera glasses were still serviceable. She wheeled out the door and down the hall.

  She looked down at the opera glasses in her lap and she remembered that she’d bought them in Paris. The year? Oh, God, let her remember the year. 1930. Yes, 1930, the year she’d gone to the Sorbonne for postdoctoral work. It had been a fabulous year of talk in the cafés, love, and passion. What had become of Max? Dead. Like all the others now gone. Pity.

  The long hall that bisected the length of the second floor of the convalescent home was empty. As she wheeled past the nurses’ station at the hallway’s midpoint, she noticed that it was vacant. The strike hurt. They were running their asses off. Good!

  No one was in the sun-room at the far end of the building. She wheeled across the tiles toward the bank of windows overlooking the parking lot and right flank of the picket line. She raised the opera glasses and swept them across her field of vision. A covey of strikers surrounded a tall, black woman who seemed to be giving directions. Fabian remembered her. On her last visit, Bea Wentworth had introduced her to the union organizer. The name? She must always struggle to remember. Ward. Yes, Kimberly Ward.

  A four-door sedan filled with six or seven men and women moved slowly down the road and turned toward the parking lot. More scabs. Newly hired workers brought to replace the strikers. Kim wouldn’t let them get through. She saw the black woman shouting, pointing, and now taking a position in front of the slowly moving car as other strikers surrounded the vehicle and rocked it from side to side. A striker was pounding on the windshield with his sign. They wouldn’t get by. Good!

  Something was going on immediately below the sun-room windows. Along the s
ide wall of the building was a small courtyard enclosed on three sides by a high brick wall that usually contained the home’s station wagon and dumpster. The van parked there this morning was unfamiliar. Its rear door was open and three men stood nearby arguing.

  She watched them with the opera glasses. It was impossible to tell what they were saying, but it was obvious that two of the men were in a violent fight with a third. Her knuckles turned white as her grip on the glasses tightened. One of the men pinned the arms of the second while the third hit him. The victim doubled forward and fell to the pavement where he lay on his side. She could see a small trickle of blood ooze from his right ear. The unconscious man was lifted and thrown into the rear of the van.

  The van backed out of the courtyard and turned into the parking lot. The vehicle accelerated as it approached the picket line. The strikers parted before the rushing vehicle as it left the convalescent home property and turned up the street.

  One man remained in the courtyard. He waited until the van cleared the line of strikers before he turned toward the building. She noticed that he wore hospital whites.

  As the hunted will be furtive, the man in the courtyard glanced in either direction and then up. Their eyes made contact. Fabian Bunting lowered her glasses and placed them on the windowsill. She swiveled her chair and began to propel herself down the long, vacant hall.

  There was a phone at the nurses’ station. She would dial 911. Surely someone would be interested in what she had just seen.

  She pushed the wheels as fast as she could but felt them spin from her hands. She turned to see a man behind her firmly gripping the handles of her chair.

  “Let me go!”

  He didn’t answer. She lurched forward when the chair made a sharp right-angle turn. He had swiveled the chair directly toward the double swinging doors of the physical therapy room. The doors swung shut behind them, and she felt a strong hand clamp over her mouth. The fingers smelled of tobacco.

  He pushed her across the room until the front of the chair bumped against the galvanized surface of a raised whirlpool tub. The hand that pressed against her mouth increased its pressure until her head slammed back against the headrest. The man bent forward and used his free hand to twirl a faucet valve.

  Steam rose as scalding water rushed into the tub.

  She looked up into the face of the man holding her not in fright so much as wonderment. She didn’t expect her system could tolerate much, but she wondered why. Yes, why?

  It would have been interesting to know.

  Bea Wentworth awoke in a funk.

  She opened one eye to peer up at her husband who was standing over her with a cup and saucer. It was unusual for him to bring her coffee in bed. He must have sensed her mood. She turned and opened the other eye to watch as he set the coffee gently on the night table.

  She could have predicted his dress before she saw him: a loose-fitting sport shirt that was color-uncoordinated with rumpled khaki pants, canvas boat shoes, and no socks. For the first time, his lack of appropriate footwear annoyed her.

  “There’re clean socks in your drawer.”

  “Uh huh. Coffee?”

  She sat up and held the cup in both hands. “You’re the only person in the world who can wrinkle fresh wash and wear.”

  “You’ve forgotten our rule. You are never to speak until you’ve had your first morning coffee.”

  “Good rule.” She drank and felt a warmth spread through her, causing a mild uplifting of her spirits. She drank again and watched Lyon lean against the wall with a bemused expression on his face. No socks and all, she liked the way he looked. He was a tall, angular, fortyish man. His blond-browning hair fell over his forehead, and he often pushed it back with a nonchalant palm. His smile had faded into a slightly troubled look, but she knew that his features could shift instantaneously to a wide, warm smile.

  “You going to work in the garden today?” he asked.

  “It’s going to rain.”

  “You could return the governor’s call.”

  “Have.”

  He took the cup from her hand and sipped coffee. “And?”

  “She offered me a job.”

  A smile broke across his face. If she hadn’t been so irritable, she would have kissed him.

  “That’s great! Why don’t you take it until you start your next campaign?”

  “I may never run for office again.”

  “Sorry for ourselves this morning, aren’t we?”

  “The governor wants me to serve on a committee that’s investigating legalized gambling.”

  He looked a little dubious. “Well, that could be interesting.”

  “I may be against legalized gambling entirely.”

  “Investigating it is one way to find out. Or you could take that Washington offer.”

  “No thanks. An under-under secretary on the civil service commission is burial.”

  Lyon looked at his wife with concern. The bulky quilt mostly hid her tallish, well-proportioned figure, but he knew well the trim curves of her body. He wanted to run his hands through her close-cropped hair, but this didn’t seem to be a terribly auspicious time. Her dark eyes were usually darting and energetic, filled with bright perception and humor. This morning they seemed listless. His wife’s vitality had temporarily vanished, but he knew it would return. She would eventually recover from her recent election defeat. In the meantime, he wished there was something he could do to lighten her depression.

  “Suppose we take a trip to New York. We could stay a few days and take in a couple of shows.”

  She smiled for the first time that morning. “You’re nearly finished with the book. Maybe when it’s done we can go to the city and celebrate.” She pushed up from the bed. “I’m alive now. Thanks for the coffee.”

  She rinsed breakfast dishes, placed them on the rack in the dishwasher, and then looked out the window into a misty morning. The day wouldn’t entice her into the garden. She could faintly hear the steady pickity pock of Lyon’s typewriter in the study. The steady rhythm of the typing told her that the book was going well. In a few days her husband’s benign children’s monsters, the Wobblies, would again sally forth to deal in more adventure and good deeds.

  God, that’s what she needed. Her own personal Wobbly to ward off the demons of depression. Bea slammed the dishwasher shut and turned the operating dial. She must keep busy. She must fill her days until the personal demons disappeared and life’s color returned.

  Bea drove the pickup truck toward the town of Murphysville. She had decided to visit Fabian Bunting. She laughed aloud. Fabian’s iconoclastic outlook on life, and the vibrancy of the old woman, would put her depression in its proper perspective. She could almost predict what her old teacher would say: “For God’s sake, Beatrice, cut the self-pity. You’ve taught, served in the state house of representatives, state senate, and a term as secretary of the state. So, you lost a congressional election to a man far to the right of Joe McCarthy … go sulk, honey.” Yes, Faby would make her laugh again, and Bea knew that her duty visit to the Murphysville Convalescent Home would do more for her than for the patient.

  She’d go as soon as she did some shopping at the supermarket. The visit would be a needed remedy for a bleak day overshadowed with dark uncertainties that occasionally haunted midlife.

  Murphysville, Connecticut, was located near the geographical center of the state, thirty miles southeast of Hartford. It was a town that in many ways appeared to be untouched by the past hundred years. The village green still faced a circle of homes, churches, and stores whose façades, by edict of the historical commission, had remained the same since the turn of the century. A mile down Main Street, away from the green, Bea pulled into a small shopping center. She purchased groceries and then continued on for another mile toward the outskirts of town and the convalescent home.

  Activity on the picket line stretched across the front of the home was now desultory. The strikers seemed to be conserving energy as they
waited for the next shift change when they would again attempt to intimidate those still working in the home. Two men walked slowly abreast with militant placards, while most of the others had spread out across the grass and held Styrofoam cups of coffee.

  Kim Ward was talking animatedly to several workers as Bea parked her car up the street and walked toward her. The black woman had been Bea’s assistant for the past several years, first in the legislature, then during Bea’s term as secretary of the state. She had been Bea’s campaign manager for her last disastrous campaign for Congress. Now, her former aide and friend was an organizer for the newly formed service workers union.

  Kim smiled and waved as Bea crossed the grass and walked toward her. “Hey, Bea! You here to give moral support or join the line?”

  “None of the above. I’m stopping in to see Dr. Bunting for a few minutes.”

  “We’ve heard that one before,” a heavyset woman stretched out on the grass with obviously painful feet said belligerently. “They give us that jazz and then sneak in and empty bedpans.”

  “Senator Wentworth’s all right,” another striker said.

  Bea held up both hands. “Honest, no work, no bedpans, no mopping. One short visit to an old lady friend and teacher.”

  “That’s the one who hung out the window this morning and yelled, ‘Right on.’”

  “Bunting’s a tiger,” someone added.

  Bea waved, promised to return later to hear their grievances, and walked briskly down the short walk to the main entrance of the home. There was no one at the reception desk near the door. A glance down the corridors revealed them to be empty also.

  She decided to take the stairs for one flight rather than wait for the slow self-service elevator. She hurried up the stairwell as if hoping to avoid the all-pervasive smell of the place. She detested this building and well understood why Fabian Bunting fought it with every fiber of her being. It was a mirror of the future—a future filled with Bea’s own limitations and the inexorable march of old age. Her present depression told her that youth was past, which meant that age hovered around a nearby corner. Infirmity crept so stealthily that you were not aware of it until it was too late for conscious choice or action.